Vivitar Wide & Slim

Is anyone else shooting with one of these? It took me awhile to get through it but I just got back my first roll and I have to say, I'm mightily impressed. It's pretty obviously not any kind of technical marvel but it made some really cool images IMO. I had no idea these things even existed—just happened upon it awhile perusing the local Goodwill and thought it was interesting that the lens was 22mm in one of those 10¢ plastic boxes. I have 7 or 8 more I need to tag and post but here's my favorite so far...

Very nice. There is something of a cult following surrounding these cameras. I picked up a new in box one for $6 a while back and slowly shot a roll through it, you really do need good light. I will develop it soon and see how it came out.

I used some "cheap junk" film... Ferrannia Solaris FG Plus 400 from a box that said Lomography 400. It seems to get a lot of trash talk around here but I happen to love it and have filled my freezer with it for about $2/roll thanks to some heavy sale prices before xmas. It doesn't have the same dynamic range as Porta or Fuji Pro but it pumps the colors and contrast up a lot and I've gotten pretty comfortable with how it will behave in various types of cameras. In particular, it does well in cameras with crap lenses which should come as no surprise. I wonder what will end up in Lomo canisters now because Ferrania went out of business back in August.

Here's another... you can really see how amped the yellow is in this shot. I don't think it would have had this same look with a less saturated film. Some E-6 might have been nice here but I don't think I'd run a roll of slide film through a camera with fixed aperture/shutter/focus.

I've pumped more film through the Vivitar Ultra Wide & Slim than just about any other camera. Maybe I should be embarrassed of the fact. Much of it has to do with its size. It's the smallest camera I own, and the film probably triples its weight -- i.e. it can go just about anywhere.

Its faults are its strengths, and I can offer the following observations about the camera:
- Light hungry? Indeed. Anything less than bright sun or bright overcast renders it pretty much useless. I would suggest 100 or 200 speed film.
- Like most so called focus-free cameras, this one has a fixed aperture of f11. You can actually get pretty close with it. But I find the shutter more sluggish than the specs suggest. I clocked mine at about 1/80. Hold it still.
- Expect images to have lots of barrel distortion. In spite of your best compositional efforts (the viewfinder isn't very accurate), you'll be hard pressed to get a shot that's perfectly level. The camera comes with its own geometry.
- The film door is flimsy. Hold the camera upside down and slide the latch all the way down to get it to pop open (I was sliding it halfway, where it tends to stop, and prying it open before I learned this "trick").
- It's actually fairly light tight. Mine is anyway.
- The vignetting and flare are amazing. Shoot into the sun often.
- It's been suggested to advance the film then shoot (versus shoot-advance) and to use only 12 or 24 exposure film. Something about putting too much pressure on the plastic inner workings.